Viacom, Yahoo join ad forces — Multi-year search ad deal covers 33 of Viacom's sites and could expand to 140 more worldwide. — NEW YORK (Reuters) — Media conglomerate Viacom Inc. said Tuesday that it had chosen Yahoo Inc. to provide search advertising for 33 of its Internet sites in a major boost to Yahoo's new Web ad system.

Palm Announces New Linux Based Mobile Platform — Today at Palm Inc's Analyst Day, Palm CEO Ed Colligan officially announced that Palm will deliver a new Linux and open source based mobile computing platform combined with Palm OS Garnet technology on new products later this year.

New Palm OS will come before the end of the year according to Ed Colligan, Palm will continue to support Palm OS base - Ed Colligan's keynote at the Palm Investor and Analyst Day, New York City — Just coming from the investor Day - Ed Colligan says "Palm is going to roll out new OS …

Palm prepping its own Linux-based OS — Just a few years late, Palm is finally getting ready to land its users onto a modern Palm-built OS. Ed Colligan, in his Investor Day keynote today, announced that Palm will be launching a homegrown Linux-based OS by the end of the year …

Google Takes Partial Ownership Of Maxthon Browser — Multiple sources are confirming that the Chinese/Israeli startup behind the Maxthon Browser has sold a minority stake to Google. The total investment size is rumored to be around $1 million. We are also hearing that this investment is part of a …

MuniFi: Build it and they still don't come? — MuniFi has now been live long enough in many cities to get some feedback. Like we predicted, this year many of these bigger networks will now be put to the test. — And well, certain initial findings are a little troubling when it comes …

Google's next advertising deal, DirecTV — VentureBeat is hearing that Google is negotiating an advertising deal with DirecTV, the nation's largest satellite broadcast service with 16 million subscribers. — Dish, the nation's second largest satellite TV company, announced a deal with Google last week.

Virtual Earth Virtually Ignored? (aka What's in a name?) — You know, of all the online "Live" services that Microsoft has, I think the mapping service has been one of best. However, hardly no one knows about it! — On Thursday last week, Google added their new myMaps feature to Google Maps.

High school teens say they'll plunk down $500 for iPhone — Though it hasn't yet hit the market, most high school students are already aware of Apple's iPhone device, with a significant number saying they're interested in forking over the $500 to call one their own, a recent study has shown.

PG&E sees plug-in hybrids as potential profit centers — SUNNYVALE, Calif.—Plug-in hybrids could one day turn motorists into energy traders, according to Pacific Gas & Electric. — The utility demonstrated on Monday a twist on the concept of the plug-in hybrid, which uses a higher capacity battery …

New Technology Aims to Bore Impatient Spammers — Spammers are impatient, so a Canadian company has developed new technology to capitalize on that impatience to cut the volume of unwanted e-mail messages flooding the Internet. — For spammers, volume is king; the more e-mails sent advertising penny stocks …

Weblogs 'need content warnings' — Readers should be warned when they are reading blogs that may contain "crude language", a draft blogging code of conduct has suggested. — The code was drawn up by web pioneer Tim O'Reilly following published threats and perceived harassment to US developer Kathy Sierra on blogs.